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March 26, 2012

Mad Men 5:1 and 2 “Just a Little Kiss”

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Maybe the 18 month hiatus meant many people just wanted to spend time with the gang. Those viewers were probably pleased with Mad Men’s return on Sunday night. Clearly a little party is all Matt Weiner thought we needed, so we got one with very little else. Even the people not invited to the party made an appearance at it. Plenty of interesting stuff happened at the party, but people are talking mainly about Megan’s (Jessica Pare: Wicker Park) performance of “Zou Bisou Bisou”. Maybe in the early 60s it would have been racy. But last season ended with Megan and Don (Jon Hamm: What About Brian) in LA, where Don used his position of power to weasel his way into her pants (as if we needed her coquettish song to show us how oh-so-sexy she is) and then in an act of the onset mid-life crisis he confided in her and then agreed to marry her. Last season was the best argument TV has ever presented for a criticism of the notion of consent. This season is about the effects of believing in the fiction.

Megan is unhappy. Don is unhappy, but that’s par for the course. Pete, Roger, Layne, Joan. Everyone is unhappy except for Trudy, but she barely made any face-time for us to know. Let’s just link of omission her into it as well: she only complained of being tired, she’s married to a Pete Campbell that is looking his age, and she is pregnant again. But they all consented.

Who did not consent to the world is how the show opens: among a civil rights protest. Young & Rubicam, a competing Madison Avenue firm, is shown to be bigots. In a joke of triumph the good folk at SCDP poke fun at the firm and then are stuck having to dress as non-bigots. SCDP will probably end up having to break the apartheid in their offices to save face and not out of any sense of justice.

I will say that I am much more interested in the Don-Megan storyline than I thought I would be. I am surprised to see him enjoying domestic living with her so much. Of course, how much fun would it be if there were children constantly around? Maybe he and Betty are perfect for each other, just sans ankle-biters.

I am also enjoying seeing Pete deal with his issues at the office. He is the workhorse behind accounts. He makes the rain and Roger acts like the senior partner, showing up for the wine and dine but letting Pete do the work. It sounds accurate to me. Of course Pete shouldn’t be content with it. He is forced to ride the train into work so he has met up with other middle managers who are the workhorses and not the show horses. Nothing like a little organization and agitation to make a show about changing cultural norms take root. I worry once Roger’s insecurity about lost prowess is revealed that Weiner et al will try to make us feel sympathetic towards him. Fuck him. Roger’s a dick and he gets what’s coming to him.

Overall it was an okay episode. I suspect Weiner was catering to a different sort of wants than I had. For that I can forgive him. Even if the episode had been a dude I would still be tuning in, the show was that good in previous years.

 

March 5, 2012

The Walking Dead 2:11 “Judge, Jury and Executioner”

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image via collider.com

synopsis here

I don’t get this episode. It’s as if the question about the value of intelligence gleaned from torture has been settled in the affirmative. Maybe the average person would torture for information, but the writers of the show should be smarter than us. I, for one, look to this show as an instruction manual for what to do when the zombiepocalypse comes. Nobody in the group even raises the question about the accuracy of what is learned. Maybe Randall (Michael Zegen: Adventureland) is lying because he thinks the scary version will save his life? Maybe a real threat would know not to tell the bad things they have done, leaving Randall to be an exception? There is not even a whiff of doubt in the camp, not even from Dale.

Randall knew about the farm before being taken to it. Odds are that he had already told them about it and even if not, the group of 30 will tour and try to find other people. That’s entirely consistent with the encounter with the guys in town. It’s consistent with the story Randall tells when being tortured. I hope we come to find out that the torture only produced what Randall thought they wanted to hear.

And then the debate about what to do with Randall…. Debate? There are political debates more filled with clash.

Now Carl (Chandler Riggs: The Wronged Man) is going to be racked with guilt for having brought the walker that killed Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn: The Shawshank Redemption) to the camp. I guess guilt is a powerful motivator for us, but as a trope in a TV show it’s tired. I cannot not roll my eyes. Is it a joke that Gary inadvertently saved Randall’s life and also inadvertently killed Dale? We saw a side of gary in this episode. Before now he had been a naive kid and now he is almost like an adult filled with an existential crisis. This latest turn will only accelerate his fall into cynicism and nihilism.

All in all this episode was about the characters turning dark. They were about to execute Randall in the coldest imaginable way possible. They only briefly delayed the execution instead of coming to terms with humanity. As of the end of the show Randall’s situation is similar to Wesley and the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride — sleep well, I’m likely to kill you in the morning. And then Dale, the single voice of reason in the whole Randall affair is killed off. The writers are making a ham and this episode was the glaze before the oven.

It was one of the weaker episodes of the series. It’s still a good series though and I will not hesitate to watch more of it. This episode was not weak enough to put it on probation.

 

June 13, 2011

The Killing: season 1 episode … Hell if I care anymore

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I had been watching The Killing. It started off like a nice alternative to the CSIs of the world. Last night’s episode killed it. Here is a good description of what’s terminally ill about the episode. The problem with the critic’s analysis is that it gives the show too much credit. After last night, the show deserves no critical evaluation. It’s worse than Spielberg’s portion of AI.

Here’s the crux of what they did. They revealed the killer to be someone so important that it is shocking. Shocking! Precisely why it’s such a bad red herring that I feel insulted. Insulted!

And…done.

update…

I did watch the season finale. I’m am so frustrated that I will not be watching even the premier of season 2.

 

October 19, 2009

Cloud Computing

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I had previously experimented with storing and using data from the cloud, even thought a bit about purchasing a netbook as my laptop of use when biking around the city (when the weather was bike-able).  There were a few hiccups with the transition and I decided not to invest the time to learn how to make it really worthwhile.  Well, to-day is my trial by fire.

The Swede has to wake early in the mornings and in the wee small hours of the morning our computers look alike, so I grabbed the wrong one.  In any case, so far so good.  I guess my cloud integration was more advanced than I had suspected.  The book is not updated but I can always add pieces to it and then integrate later.  Thanks to Dropbox I have access to some important files.  RSS feeds will keep me up to date on my reading.  It seems as though my current MacBook is, in reality, a netbook.  An expensive netbook, but one nonetheless.  I am not sure how I feel about that.

I even fretted about music for a bit but…(1) I am at Spyhouse where the best of Bill Withers is playing so that’s righteous enough background noise and (2) Last.fm.  If I were good about updating, which Dropbox does automatically had I been smart, then the transition would be seamless.

On another, yet similar, note Verizon will soon be launching an Android based 3G smartphone.  I have been with Verizon for years now and unwilling to change because the travel schedule makes Verizon a superior carrier in some locations.  Plus, the few people I am in constant contact with also use Verizon which means those communications are covered in the basic plan.  If anything could lull me away it would be a 3G smartphone and I qualify for a new phone in December, birthday!, which is well after the planned release of the Droid.  Now I am a mere few months away from always being on the cloud.  I am excited about this even though most of my daily frustrations are about me spending too much time on the computer and not enough in analog land.  I am walking proof of loving gadgets for gadgetry’s sake.

 

June 24, 2008

The Reveal

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I have always been a proponent of MTV. People mock it, like pop music, but I think there is value to watching it, or at least keeping abreast of it. Not only because I think it is important to be culturally relevant but also because there are important concepts to be gleaned. It may take more work than listening to NPR does, but there is value in there.

I remember a few seasons of The Real World ago there was a marathon with commentary by Coral, a fixture among the franchise. She was commenting on an episode where one of the cast members cheated on a significant other that was back home. Corals’ comment was “and here comes the reveal.” I thought this was particularly insightful since the only thing that was happening was a conversation between the cast member and the significant other, but the name of the other was mentioned. Here is how it usually happens:

Significant other: “What did you do last night?”
Cast member: “Oh, not much. Just hung out with Thomas/Tammy. It was a pretty boring night.”

I thought it was insightful because not only did Coral demonstrate the name dropping was a hint, but that it was an intentional hint – what I guess the kids these days call fishing for a reaction. Zizek (2008) makes the same observation in his latest tome: “the question to be raised is: what more is there hiding in this statement that made the speaker enunciate it?” (49) Zizek and Coral have the same lesson for us: if it was no big deal then why was the name of an-other mentioned? The Real World teaches us that the motivation is to get a reaction. The cast member wants to feel important and the best measure is if you can make another person feel badly by behaving badly.

Zizek’s illustration in In Defense of Lost Causes is eerily similar to the above, a husband and wife in an unspoken open relationship except the husband one day mentions the affair. The wife now responds hysterically because the affair(s) are now spoken therefore something has changed in the relationship.

 

November 23, 2006

Studio 60 is not so bad after all

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Gavin Edwards uses the latest Rolling Stone (November 30, page 44) to talk about what ails NBC’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” except he misdiagnoses the problem. His solution is to make the sketch comedy, in case you do not follow “Studio 60” is a show about a Saturday Night Live-like sketch comedy show, funny. This is not the problem, rather I think it speaks to a larger desire Edwin has, and that is the real problem for NBC.

If Edwards’ theory is correct then it means people tune into an hour long show for a glimpse of A joke (usually at the end of the show.) I doubt that is what motivates people and consequently I doubt making that change would keep people coming back for more. If the sketch comedy were funny maybe there would be more viewers in the last half hour, just as SNL these days is viewed exclusively (at least by my friends) for the first half hour, but this seems to be a pretty low mark in quality that I doubt would make any show’s producers happy.

There is another problem with Edwards’ theory. I do believe the American public is able to watch TV with a necessary suspension of disbelief, not everything has to be an accurate representation of our current world. People know the sketches are supposed to be funny in the world of “Studio 60.” This is the same world where Matthew Perry’s character is established as a comic genius. This is the same world where everyone in Pahrump, Nevada is a country yokel. This is not our world and yet Edwards’ basic complaint is that it is too different. “Lost,” “Battlestar Galactica,” and “30 Rock” are some of the success stories that disprove Edwards’ need for realism.

The real problem of “Studio 60” is that it is based on SNL, a successful SNL. I suspect Edwards longs for the good-old days when SNL was funny. I suspect it is this appeal which compelled NBC to buy Sorkin’s latest text book – writing text books is what Sorkin does. “West Wing” was his way to educate us about politics. “Sports Night” was an education about ESPN. And this should teach us about SNL. The problem is that SNL is an anachronism. Maybe the quality has dropped and that has led to its demise as a cultural force, or maybe its importance was declining which is why it is no longer a quality show (maybe both) but the result is the same.

“Studio 60” is held on by NBC not as a vehicle in itself to make profits, but also as a way to invigorate a once great NBC institution. I will admit I watch SNL more than I used to because of what I am learning from “Studio 60.” While I think the comedy writing for “Studio 60” is not funny, I do not think it should be. SNL is based not on just being funny but also on being witty (even though those moments do not make it onto the greatest hits highlights). People know what is funny, they need to be taught on what is witty and why it is witty. “Studio 60” does a great job teaching that. The last episode contained a brilliant running commentary on humor, Quentin Tarantino and gore. I feel smarter having seen the last episode.

People are judging the show based upon the show it purports to be, a SNL that is a cultural force. No show airing these days matches up to that standard and a new comparison for profitability needs to be found.

That better model for “Studio 60” to follow is “ER”. The big concern then was if people would watch a show that was steeped in medical knowledge and refused to dumb it down. But people watched, learned and loved it for a long time. Surely the educational quality was not the sole reason people watched but regardless it was a bold gamble. I am confident the “Studio 60” gamble will pay off. It could be funnier and have more of a draw, but I am happy with the show and I will continue to come back to NBC on Mondays.

If I were at NBC I would wait until the show was losing money before pulling this plug. It may take some time, but I think it will pay off. This is, after all, what leadership and being a cultural manager is all about. Sometimes you may think things can be better, that does not mean you can just plod ahead, but you need to plow through resistance. I am confident people will come around.

 

November 7, 2006

What I am Watching: Heroes

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Last night’s (November 5) episode of Heroes was an interesting one. I was able to successfully watch the show while doing some work, which means the show is not complex and not one of the better shows on TV (I would never try to watch an Aaron Sorkin show or Friday Night Lights in this manner.)

Another problem with this show is exemplified by what happened last night: there are too many “mutants” and their powers are too diverse. I place mutants in quotation marks because I fear the explanation for these strange powers will not all be mutations. This show is beginning to resemble a comic book universe with too many characters and too much going on, which is why both Marvel and DC have to periodically clean house by killing off some characters.

The other problem with these new revelations is that they are too convenient. We learn that a little boy has an ability to manipulate electronics at precisely the moment when he needs to call his mother and the pay phone just happens to be out of order. The cop can read minds but the power is not activated until the story needs a clairvoyant to find a little girl. It is just all too clean. It would make more sense for there to be a single mutation that several people around the world have, but some are more experienced in the use of the mutation. I think that would make for a better story and some more interesting scenarios. It would make for a greater constraint on the writers, which is what I (and I am guessing others) respond to, to see how the writers work there way out of problems. If there are any comic book illustrators out there, let me know as I have some rough drafts of books that need some illustrations for this plotline. I think it could be fun and entertaining and also a good seller.

Despite all of these frustrations, I will continue to watch Heroes because it is, after all, a good show. I enjoy some of the people and I am hooked by the mysteries they have yet to explain. I think there are ways to improve the story, most of these problems are not fatal and some can be uncorked, but it would require a more subtle touch than I fear the current writers possess.